Google News Denied, Where to go from here?

In hind site, I should have created a news category and submitted only the link to breaking news events, but the reason for not being accepted was

"We reviewed your site and are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We found that the articles on this site primarily promote a third party organization/organizations."

We have been partnering with this NFL Draft site so there has been outgoing links, but I'm guessing that the amount of banners on my site could have been a result of being denied too. There is also partner traffic sharing widgets on our site like Uproxx, Crowdignite etc. For the most part the articles do not have ads in the text, all banners and partner sites are at the end of the article or in the sidebar. In short, it's not a very "In Your Face" page layout.

What do you do think the main reason for being denied was? A little from Column A? a little form Column B? or all of the above? Furthermore, is it really worth cutting ties with some of what I listed to get into Google News? is the traffic that great?

Sorry for the delayed response. i had some server issues of my own to take care of the last few days.

It looks as if the team thinks you are promoting others a lot. The pages do look busy even though they are not so "in your face" as you say. Traffic widgets and stuff can be viewed as promotion and sometimes you have to look at this in a different manner. Now it is easy to look at your site and say you comply with guidelines. You know your site. You have to look at this from a different standpoint. If you take the time to get you team together. Look at each one of the guidelines and try to come up with any idea how someone could say you dont comply with it. Do this for each guideline and get your list together. Once you have done this, fix the things you are even a little unsure of as being in compliance. The others, you need to point out to google news in your application. If they could mis read something on your site, tell them how you have anticipated this and explain it to them.